Hooksett School Board member blasts effort to find school solution

HOOKSETT — Hooksett School Board member John Lyscars said other board members are acting in a way designed to have the district's high school students end up at Pinkerton Academy.

Lyscars said that by not investigating the multi-district option, where the district's students would be split between different high schools, it might be a foregone conclusion that Hooksett's students will end up at Pinkerton.

"It seems the board's actions are designed to make Pinkerton the only option, and in reality it is not the only option," Lyscars said.

However, board chairman Trisha Korkosz said that Lyscars is wrong.

"That is just not an accurate statement, Superintendent (Charles) Littlefield has sent out exploratory letters to eight or nine different districts about the possibility of accepting our students," Korkosz said.

While Korkosz said that Pinkerton is just one of the options the district has, "they are one of the more viable actions, but that doesn't mean a decision has been made."

Hooksett currently has a breach claim with the department of education against Manchester designed to prematurely terminate the two district's contract for Hooksett's high school students in 2016 instead of 2018, when it is scheduled to expire.

Lyscars said that while the decision to explore a single district option for students instead of a multi-district option was voted on in June, the impetus of the choice goes back to his election as a board member last year."

When I was running for this seat, I advocated the multi-district option. The person I was running against, who was supported by Korkosz, did not. I think a lot of what is going on now is based in part because I won the election," Lyscars said.

Lyscars said he has accumulated, along with fellow board member David Pearl, valuable data that indicates a multi-district would have been an applicable option. However, he said other board members such as Korkosz are not interested in looking at the information."

They don't even want to investigate the other possibilities, and they don't want to listen to the data, because I think they are afraid that it will show it is a viable solution," Lyscars said.

And without the multi-district option being explored, Lyscars said that based upon information gathered from Littlefield, Pinkerton might be the only single district option viable.

"In single school solution, not including Manchester, Pinkerton is probably the only viable option, but I hope Littlefield has more information for us at the next school board meeting, but he has hinted that Pinkerton was only favorable so far," Lyscars said.